A sense amplifier for use in a non-volatile memory was disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,713,797, Morton et al and 4,727,519, Morton et al. The sense amplifier disclosed in those two patents compared the current in a reference bit line to the current in a selected bit line. The reference bit line very accurately simulated bit lines in the array so that the current comparison technique was very effective for providing reliable sensing. The sense amplifier was common to many bit lines with a column decoder coupling only the selected bit line to the sense amplifier. The column decoder for many bit lines was thus also coupled to the sense amplifier but only to the side of the sense amplifier which was coupled to the selected bit line. The column decoder thus added capacitance to the select side of the sense amplifier. Reproducing the column decoder on the reference side of the sense amplifier required too much space and was not considered practical. The result was that the charging of the reference bit line was faster than the charging of the selected line because of the additional capacitance on the selected side of the sense amplifier. This did not adversely affect the ability of the sense amplifier to provide reliable detection but it did adversely affect the speed of detection.